"Have You Considered Your Parents' Happiness?" : Conversion Therapy Against LGBT People in China

Although China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, and in 2001 the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, public hospitals and private clinics across the country continue to offer so-called "conversion therapy." This "treatment" aims to change an 'sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual, based on the false assumption that homosexuality is a disorder that needs to be remedied. Based on interviews with 17 LGBT people who underwent conversion therapy, and with parents and rights activists, this report documents multiple abusive aspects of conversion therapy, including coercion and threats, physical abduction, arbitrary confinement, forced medication and injection, and use of electroshocks. The report also find that the practice of conversion therapy in itself violates China's Mental Health Law.